Manage Google’s Latest ‘More Hours’ Feature at Scale Using Milestone Local

When it comes to local presence on Google, to be relevant for “near me” type of searches the services that a business offers needs to be up-to-date on the GMB profile of the business location.

Google trusts listings that are complete and provide a great amount of information to the user. With Google’s latest feature “More Hours” you can now add the operational hours for individual services you offer.

For example, a bar may offer multiple services like Delivery, Happy Hours, Senior Hours, Takeout, etc. The hours between which each of these services are offered can now be added to a business’ GMB profile under the “More Hours” section. “More Hours” is a sub-section of “Business Hours” which is specific to the services being offered.

The Limitations of GMB when it comes to “More Hours”

The “More Hours” option allows you to communicate the availability of a variety of services that your business might offer. Prior to this feature, businesses could only display the ‘Working Hours’ of the business.

The “More Hours” feature is great for businesses that offer a variety of services, but it does have its limitations. The GMB Dashboard does not allow users to update service hours across multiple outlets or locations.

This is especially troublesome of businesses offering the same service from multiple locations. Many businesses overlook this feature because individually managing this information across multiple outlets is quite a tedious task.

Does adding GMB “More Hours” impact ranking on SERPs?

The “More Hours” tab does not directly impact your ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), but consumers seem to be searching for local solutions everywhere. According to Google, 54% of smartphone searches for businesses are looking to check the business hours and 18% of local smartphone searches lead to a purchase within the same day. Easily accessible information about the availability of a service makes it easier for a customer to decide.

Which businesses can use GMB “More Hours”?

All businesses can add “More Hours” for the services they offer. The services might vary depending on the business category.

Presently there are 10 services that you can choose to add “More Hours” to:

• Access 
• Brunch 
• Delivery  
• Drive through 
• Happy hours 
• Kitchen 
• Online service hours 
• Pickup  
• Takeout 
• Senior hours 

These services will vary depending on your business category. For example, a bank will show services like Online Service Hours, Drive Through, and Senior Hours, whereas, a restaurant will show services, like Delivery, Brunch, Takeout, Pickup, etc. 

How Milestone’s Local solution helps your business add “More Hours” across multiple locations

Rather than having to manually update “More Hours” across multiple locations, Milestone’s “More Hours” solution allows you to use the Milestone Presence Cloud to update “More hours” across multiple locations in one shot, which can save hours for a multi-location businesses.

To learn more about how the Milestone’s Local solution and how you can manage your profile completeness to improve your visibility on search, contact us via email at sales@milestoneinternet.com or call us on 408-200-2211.